America’s Highway

Always a very special charm surrounds and covers stories of some American roads have become even more symbols than gray ribbons of asphalt traveled by any kind of vehicles. Route 66 is perhaps the most famous, with it’s 2400 miles through eight states and three time zones that unites Chicago Illinois with Santa Monica, California, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. A road sung, narrated and filmed, became a symbol of a lifestyle “coast to coast” so dear to the Americans, and not only. In a nutshell: a American myth. The road is the need for Americans to move, make knowledge and experience, sometimes even subversive, in that immensity of U.S. territory by drawing specific lifestyles. Just think at the beat generation that “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac drew strength to give birth to the youth movement of the sixties. Road means culture, architecture, art, music, nature, but, above all, unity. Suffice reading “Blue Highways” by William Least Heat Moon to understand what lies behind a common road if you’re in America. A journey that takes you from one metropolis to another through small villages, motels, convenience stores, gas stations with the inevitable distributor of Coca-Cola and the fantastic multi-colored signs touting everything. In the Deep South, where they are concentrated – among other things – most of the projects travel Travel For Fans of the roads are strongly linked to the blues and migration of black people to the North much more rich in job prospects and life. Memphis is the city where they arrive, meet and unfold, the main roads. The best known is Highway 61, which enters into the State of Mississippi through the alluvial lowlands of the Delta, and for almost 320 kilometers enters a region where time seems to stand still embraced by the course of the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers. In this land, the most fertile of all the Member States, nurtured for centuries by the periodic flooding of the two rivers and inexhaustible work of Black people – first slave and then laborers – in the huts of the peasants along the cotton fields, soybean and tobacco plantations and construction sites of consolidation of riverbanks, was born the Blues, in its essence, poetry and music. The legendary Sixty-One, which gives the title to one of the most important rock albums of the story of Bob Dylan start from Wyoming, Minnesota and arrives, largely following the course of the Mississippi River in New Orleans in Louisiana after about 2,300 miles. The link with the black populations of the area contributed greatly to create the myth that still stands today, despite its course has been changed over time. A monument to “The Blues Highway ” can be found in Clarksdale where legend has it that at the intersection with Highway 49 Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his skills as a sublime blues guitarist . Much of this we have seen in many movies and read novels set in the Deep South, or we can admire the harvest in the town of Leland at the Highway 61 Blues Museum where, with a little ‘luck, we witness an unexpected concert by Pat Thomas, son of the more famous James “Son” Thomas, perhaps during a trip travel For Fans.